


Sketches

by anamatics



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-15 21:32:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1319926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'd like to draw you sometime," Joan turns to stare at her, toothbrush jammed in her mouth and foam threatening to spill out at any passing moment.  "Would you sit for me?"</p><p>The answer is obviously no, but somehow, Joan finds herself being drawn (in) anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sketches

**Author's Note:**

> dbz-style fusion dance of the following prompts:  
> "Jamie sketching Joan in the morning, when she’s glaring, and uh…other ways." + "Those waking up Joan Watson gifs are adorable. Can you write a fic where Jamie wakes Joan up in all kinds of crazy, annoying, sweet, cute ways? :D"

Somehow, it had started. It had been a smile at first; a nod, a slow and steady wearing down of wills until it is something that Joan doesn't want to put a label on.

To put a label on it means that it would be real. That thought scares her.

She, despite how complicated the thing between them is, likes the simplicity of what they have now.  They are very like-minded in that regard.  It is not meant to be anything more than it is, a collection of lines, thrown haphazardly across the canvas of their intersecting lives.

She knows that she will fall.  It is only a matter of time.  Joan doesn't fear it: that moment when her world will come down to a simple choice - a betrayal that tastes of danger and feels like sin against her skin.  It will come as all moments do, and she will examine the options then.

-

They're in the middle of a case, running on coffee and Red Bull, sleeping in shifts when they have a moment of quiet.  A child is missing and Joan can feel them both slipping.  She's curled on the couch, Sherlock pacing the length of the room.  It's four in the morning and she knows that she can’t stay awake much longer. 

He's in mid-rant when he sees her head droop down onto her shoulder.  He sends her upstairs without a word.  He will follow soon; she knows it just by looking at him.  He's dead on his feet and no amount of caffeine and pushups can keep a man awake past the forty-eight hour mark.

Drifting in dreams, Joan sees nothing and she sees everything.  Her mind is awash with colors and sounds. It is in this place that she can forget what is happening in the world outside her life - where she can remember things that are good and fill her with joy, rather than the images of dead people and missing children.

She is so content, wrapped up in her world of dreams, that when the bed dips and a hand rests gently on her shoulder, it takes a long time for Joan to pull herself from sleep.

Perfume, that's new.  Joan breathes in deeply and feels lips press against her temple before a voice whispers urgently in her ear. "Watson," Joan's eye cracks open, her mind sluggishly trying to remember where she is and why Moriarty is here.  _She's supposed..._ Joan loses the thread of her thought, drifting back into sleep and the warmth of the body sitting on the edge of the bed.  "Watson, wake up."

Joan lets out a quiet groan, not wanting to be awake. "What..." Why wasn't Moriarty in Germany like she said? She runs a tired hand through her hair, pulling it from her eyes and blinking sleep away rapidly as she stares up at the slightly blurry and oddly concerned-looking face of Moriarty. "What are you doing here?" she asks.

Moriarty gets off the bed, and Joan is left cold and curling back under the blankets. She’s watching, covers drawn up to her chin, as Moriarty crosses to the closet and opens it.  She stands there for a moment, contemplating Joan's clothes, her finger resting on her chin.  "Looking for Sherlock," she says, reaching forward and selecting a shirt.

"What time is it?"  Sitting up, Joan can see that it's just past nine thirty, and it's weird that Sherlock hasn't bounced in here with a new theory of their kidnapping and breakfast.  She pulls her glasses out from under her book.  Shoving them up her nose, she stares at Moriarty with narrowed eyes as Moriarty selects a pair of jeans, rising into her toes to pull them down from the shelf where she keeps them. "Wait... how did you get in?"

"There are very few doors I cannot open when I put my mind to it," Moriarty says airily.  She sets the shirt and jeans on the end of the bed. "Get dressed, Sherlock is absent and I fear he's already gone off..."

"Gone off and what?"  Joan asks.  She sits up and tugs her shirt over her head, ignoring how the intensity of Moriarty's gaze intensifies and grows dark with desire.  She can look all she wants, she's not getting any.  Not this morning.

It's not until she's pulled her jeans on that Moriarty speaks again.  "You have been skirting around the edges of this kidnapping for long enough, Watson.  It's time you were brought up to speed."

The pronouncement seems odd, and Moriarty has a pensive expression on her face as Joan rummages for socks and debates disappearing off into the bathroom to wash her face and put in her contacts.  She isn't sure she trusts Moriarty alone, no matter how benign this visit seems.

She sits on the edge of her bed and tugs on her socks before she speaks, not really looking at Moriarty.  "This isn't... another of your um, _organization_ gone rogue is it? Because if it is, I'd really rather not know, if it's all the same to you."

The last two times had ended with Sherlock shot and Moriarty nearly bleeding out. Joan can't shake the feeling that she's next.  She gets to her feet and pads silently over towards the bathroom.  Contacts were a must, because Moriarty liked her glasses and had said so on many occasions. Joan, even just waking up, knows it's probably a bad idea to have Moriarty distracted right now.

Her expression betrays nothing, but Moriarty's tone and sharp, "It's not," is enough.  The assumption, Joan can tell from Moriarty’s growing scowl, is rude and insulting. Joan reaches for her toothbrush and Moriarty, trailing after her like a particularly lethal dog, leans against the doorframe, watching Joan with interested eyes. "I'd like to draw you sometime," Joan turns to stare at her, toothbrush jammed in her mouth and foam threatening to spill out at any passing moment.  "Would you sit for me?"

To be told what was going on, Joan thinks she would do a great many things, but she cannot ignore the little voice screaming 'danger Joan Watson' in her head.  It feels, it sounds, just like Sherlock.  "No," she says, a flat-out refusal. She spits the rest of the toothpaste from her mouth and rises off the toothbrush.  "I don't that's a good idea."

"Pity." Moriarty has the gall to sound legitimately disappointed. Joan glares. She straightens, turning and heading towards the stairs. "I brought coffee, hurry downstairs before it gets cold."

-

Sherlock reappears a few hours later, looking like he's been out in the cold spring morning for some time.  His shoes are wet and Joan doesn't ask where he's been.  He takes one look at Moriarty and his lips press together into a thin, irritated line.  "Why are you here?"

She regards him, standing with a to-go cup of coffee in one hand and thick folio notebook of blank paper in the other, a smile ripe with private amusement starting to grow across her face.  She steps forward, setting her coffee on the mantle and her fingers hovering just over where they've hung up a copy of the missing little boy's school picture. "Tyler Evans is missing; I have information on him that they police do not have."  She raises an eyebrow in challenge and Sherlock scowls at her.

-

"She brought you that coffee," Sherlock points out, gesturing at her with his knife as he cuts up a bagel in the kitchen some ten minutes later when they’ve let her take a call upstairs alone.  He says it like an accusation, but he doesn’t know.  He cannot know. 

Joan doesn't respond, doesn't know how to respond.  She leans against the doorframe, cradling it between two hands and watching him as he loads the bagel into the toaster and goes off hunting for the peanut butter. "Are you really okay with her just... lurking like this?"

He pulls down the container of peanut butter and opens it, sniffing experimentally.  "I am hardly amenable to any situation that has her within a one hundred mile radius of you or me," He sighs and collects bagel when it pops up.  "Although, right now I cannot see the harm.  Tyler Evans is missing, Watson.  And she knows details about the case. Details we didn’t have."

She takes half the bagel when he offers it to her, covered in too much peanut butter. Joan takes the knife and scrapes some of it off and onto his half.  He eyes her and she hands him back the knife and takes a bite, chewing thoughtfully. "Yes, but she obviously has an agenda."

There’s the quiet sound of Moriarty reappearing, her expression pensive and arms full of that same notepad.  She’s produced yellow pencil that has Joan flashing unpleasantly back to grade school from somewhere and has it held between two fingers almost thoughtfully.  "Oh, I do," she announces and Joan doesn’t really manage to keep her eye roll hidden.  Her bagel is forgotten and she’s frowning deeply as Moriarty continues to speak, completely unperturbed.  "And what it is doesn't concern you save that it is in mine, as well as your, best interests that the child is found and found promptly."

"Ire-" Sherlock begins.

" _Jamie_ ," Joan cuts him off, sensing a fall into old patterns.  "Just who is Tyler Evans?"

The pencil in Moriarty's hand taps, eraser against paper, almost anxiously.  A random pitter-patter of sound that cuts thought the silence of the kitchen.  "Does this mean that you trust me?"  She shifts, pulling the pad so it’s resting flat against her chest.  Joan can see the back page is covered in Moriarty’s spindly handwriting.  It’s with Joan’s curious eyes on her that Moriarty raises an eyebrow, and draws her pencil downwards in a steady, curving line.

"To be utterly self-serving?"  Joan replies, her face neutral but her eyes all challenge.  "I do."

Two days later, when they've found the boy curled inside a cardboard box in the middle of field, stubbornly clinging to life, they can finally breathe.  Captain Gregson shakes Moriarty's hand, stiffly thanking her for her assistance and looking like he's biting back curses and condemnations.

It is a breezy spring morning, and Moriarty's pad flaps in the wind as she speaks to Sherlock after the captain is through with her.  Joan catches sigh of the first page - a line drawing and the subject is instantly recognizable.  Joan’s face stares up at her, half obscured by Moriarty's arm across the page as she holds the pad against her side.

Her eyes are half-closed against the breeze and when Moriarty catches Joan looking, she smiles broad and open and it feels like another promise Joan knows she cannot keep.

-

"You two have grown close," Sherlock says one afternoon not long after the Tyler Evans case is complete. Joan has spent an inordinate amount of time reading up on the Boy in the Box case from Philadelphia in the fifties.  She cannot shake the similarities and she’s trying to understand the _why_ of it. 

"Humm?"  Joan looks up from her book, not following his subject leap.  A second ago, he'd been talking about other famous cold cases from Philly and how he harbors a "private want" to go down there and poke around their archives.

"You and _Jamie_ ," Sherlock says, drawing out the name with a grimace of distaste.

She closes her book, one finger tucked into it to save her place.  Folding her hands on her lap, Joan looks at Sherlock hard, watching as the emotions that he is adamant about not having dance across his face.  He looks hurt, betrayed, and oddly, pleased.  "We get together and grouse about you," she jokes, but she can see how his brow furrowed in actual concern and quickly adds. "Coffee, a few times, and she ambushed me at the Met about a month ago when Emily was sick and I went anyway.  We had lunch."

What they'd actually done was a lot more complicated that - an hour of wandering around, trading barbed comments and admiring artwork together.  It had almost felt like a date. Joan had followed Moriarty without hesitation save the twisting feeling of anticipation in her stomach into the back seat of a town car with definitely illegal tint on the windows.  Another hour and Joan, stated and thoroughly debauched, found herself only half listening to the announcement that the coffee dates would have to stop for a while, dear Watson, as there was business in Germany that Moriarty simply had to see to in person.

"She is familiar with you..." Sherlock trails off, scratching at his jaw.  He fidgets, his hand twitches ever so slightly before he hurriedly shoves it into his pocket.  Joan knows that the twitchiness is residual, from the drugs, and she hates that he’s so ashamed of it that he feels compelled to hide it from her. "She's up to something."

 _Yes_ , Joan thinks.  _She's trying to see me fall._

"I'm sure," is all she says, and opens her book back up.  This is not the sort of conversation she's willing to have right now.  "I'll tell you the next time I get ambushed, okay?"

-

Joan is dozing, rocked by the sound of the train.  She'd going up to Poughkeepsie - to Vassar to see a student's work that supposedly has some connection to their murder.  "I would send you pictures -- but it's too just big and you must understand the scope of it," the harassed-sounding professor had insisted earlier over the phone.  Sherlock had dismissed the lead, bored and uninterested with the idea of leaving the city in the middle of a case.  Joan had said that she'd go, desperate to escape the heat of the city for even a few hours.

Murders spike during heat waves, Joan knows this.  This is only one lead of many - and they've split up before while working on cases.  She doesn't know why she feels unsteady, curled into the window seat on a train car that smells like piss and stale cigarette smoke.  She's sticking to the red vinyl seat and she can't get comfortable enough to actually fall asleep.

Somewhere before the train get out of the city, someone gets on and takes the far seat in Joan’s row.  Joan hadn't really bothered to look, already half-asleep, lulled by the lullaby of Metro North.  She hears the rustle of pages and the tell-take scratch, scratch, scratch of pencil against high quality art paper and she feels herself freeze.  _There is no way._  

She lets out a quiet sigh.

"Are you following me?" she asks idly, not looking away from the window.  She's suddenly a lot more awake.

It's an amused chuckle that greets her.  "Stay still a moment longer, darling, I'm nearly finished."

"I told you to stop drawing me."  But she doesn't move.  She’s half distracted, eyes watching as the city fades away to towns and suburbs - splashes of forests and wide open fields.

"You have such an exquisite form, Joan.  I wish you'd let me paint you from life, rather than memory."

Joan turns to look at her then, and it's weird.  Moriarty on a train.  Joan has visions of every train heist movie she's ever seen and she can't shake them as Moriarty's lips quirk upwards into a shy smile.  She has a streak of graphite on her cheek and another on her shirt. Joan is sure, judging by how careful and deliberate she knows Moriarty to be, that they are intentional.  To make her seem smaller, less grand – approachable.

"You have a good memory," Joan says, stretching her arms over her head and turning so that they're facing each other.  "Better than most."

Moriarty makes a little 'humph' noise at the back of her throat, as though she can't believe that Joan would think so little of her mind's ability.  Joan just smiles.  "Why are you following me?" she asks again.

There's a pause, fingers curling around the edge of the sketchbook in her lap. It’s almost nervous, but that doesn't make any sense. "I wanted to see the work."

"Really?"  Joan's eyes narrow.  "Mine or the kid's?"

A shrug.  "Both, but you, naturally, are far more interesting."

Joan sighs a long-suffering sigh and scoots over so that they're sitting next to each other, thighs pressing together through Joan’s skirt and Moriarty’s slacks.  "Show me, then, or I won't let you come with me."

They both know that Joan can't stop her, but it's the pretending that Joan can that makes this work for both of them.  Moriarty's fingers uncurl, and she opens to the page where her finger's still marking her place.

Joan is drawn, her chin resting in her palm, face obscured save the lightly drawn reflection in the window that's loosely sketched in.  It's captivating in a way that Joan can't understand.

Their shoulders are touching and yet she leans over, closer still.  Her nose is half-buried in Moriarty's hair and she's licking her finger and rubbing at the smear of graphite on Moriarty's cheek. At least she isn't naked in this one.

-

"I think that Moriarty is attempting to befriend you," Sherlock says, apropos of nothing, head half buried in another one of his bomb diffusing projects.  Joan is making dinner, half-way though cutting up a pepper, when he makes this announcement and her hand doesn't falter.  Surgeons have steady hands, her mother had always told her, and they maintain their composure.

She turns baleful eyes to him.  "What gave you that idea?"

"She followed you to Vassar to see that installation," Sherlock says, waving a pliers holding hand dismissively.  "And she's been drawing you."

Joan turns her attention back to the pepper.  "I told her I wouldn't sit for her," she explains.  "I didn't think it was a good idea.  This is her way of wearing me down."

He makes a humming noise and then lets out a low curse, the beeping that has been coming steadily from his bomb accelerates to almost a single tone and Joan calmly sets down the knife and slowly starts to back out of the room.  He lunges for the other pair of pliers and hurriedly flips through wires until he finds the right one and snips it, letting out a breath of air.  The beeping stops. "Are you going to sit for her, when you've deemed she's asked nicely enough?"

Joan returns to her pepper.  "Probably not."

"Why not?"

Because doing so means that she's committed to whatever it is between them.  Because art is an intimate thing for Moriarty - for _Jamie._   When she's creating is the only time that Joan can look at her and truly see a human and not a monster.  She doesn't want to commit to that, to allow the human in her to know the human in Jamie Moriarty then.  She'll fall then, she knows it for sure.  She'll fall and she'll be lost forever.

"Because it's not what I want," she says, slicing into the pepper once more.

-

In early September, just before Labor Day, they’ve pulled an odd case involving someone that Moriarty used to work with.  The summer heat is still clinging to the city and Joan has a standing invitation to go out to the beach with Oren and some of his and Gabrielle’s friends, provided they can get this case solved before then. 

Joan has been left to ‘watch her like a hawk’ while Sherlock and Captain Gregson drive down to the archives and pick up a few more cold case files.  They’re sitting on opposite ends of the conference room table, eyeing each other.  Joan’s surrounded by a great mess of papers, and Moriarty’s got her sketchbook out, making notes in one small corner of the page and occasionally doodling little hearts and roses long the top of the page.  Soon though, Joan notices that the little doodles have morphed into something intense – she’s being sketched against her will.  _Again._

 She goes back to her collage, going over the evidence again in her head – wondering what they’re missing, because it’s obviously something huge.  Moriarty has been oddly tight-lipped about the case, only providing a few details that they were sort of already aware of.  She stares at the photograph in her hand, trying to decipher the reasoning behind the man’s actions – it had all seemed so _random_ so utterly random, until Moriarty had turned up and had honestly looked haunted by the crime scene photos until her face had gone carefully blank.

"Can you draw, Joan?" she asks, some twenty minutes of Joan pondering the case later.

Joan looks up. "Not even a little," she confesses. She appreciates art, yes, but she’s never felt compelled to do much more than doodle the occasional stick figure or cartoonish face.  She eyes the sketchpad in Moriarty’s hands, the dark pencil lines twisting around something that she can’t quite make out from her vantage point. "Are you finished?"

"Not yet," Moriarty replies, hand still moving but eyes fixed, almost intensely, on Joan.  "You have a creative mind, Watson, anyone can see it in the way you dress yourself."

"I spent over a decade wearing pajamas professionally, I'm allowed."

Moriarty’s hand stills.  "No one's saying you're not," she points out, gesturing to Joan with the shiny gold cap on the back of her pencil.  There’s no eraser.  Interesting.  "You have good taste, a good eye.” Moriarty continues, “You know art, you appreciate art as I do." She sets her pencil down, and Joan can see that the side of her hand is streaked shiny dark grey with graphite.   "You could be an artist if you set your mind to it."

It isn’t that she doesn’t take it to be a compliment, but Joan’s sat still long enough.  She has things that she needs to be doing, stuff to hang on the bulletin board and a few more files she needs to collect.  She doesn’t move though, instead eyeing Moriarty’s picture upside down across the table. "Seriously, are you done yet? I need to put this up there and get the other file."

"Very well."

Joan gets to her feet and is pinning pictures to the board when she decides that they’ve reached a point in whatever this is between them that some honesty is merited.  Sighing, thumb and forefinger curled around a thumbtack, Joan turns to face Moriarty.  She’s being stared at, but she’s almost used to that by now, but it’s the intensity under which she’s being scrutinized that has Joan biting nervously at her lip and almost wanting to break eye contact.  "I don't want to be an artist." She confesses.

If this is an affront to Moriarty, her face doesn’t show anything other than polite curiosity.  "Why not?" Moriarty asks.

_Because I already see too many similarities between us._

"Here, I'll show you."  Joan crosses the room and leans over Moriarty and plucks the pencil - 4B that slashes a thick black line across the careful arch of Moriarty's sketch – from her hands.  She carefully avoids rubbing her hand against the sketch of herself, one hand plunged into her hair and the other holding up a photo, her lips turned downwards in concentration.  In the corner of the page, Joan doodles a little caricature of Moriarty's face and hair, adding a few squiggles and a diabolical expression for good measure.

Moriarty's eyebrows climb up her forehead when Joan hands her the pencil back and crosses over to the cardboard box where most of the previous case information that they’ve been looking at is kept.  "You... were not kidding," she says.

Joan knows she’s not the best artist in the world, and she is not insulted by comment. Instead she shrugs, new case file in her hand.  Grinning broadly at Moriarty, she simply says, "I rarely am."

-

The coffee shop is steamy and warm. It is late morning, a cool morning in early October.  Joan sits in the front window, a table for two, reading the sports section of the Herald.  She's waiting, she's been waiting, and she's bored.  The baseball boxes have little appeal to her after the fifteenth minute of staring at them and trying to will the standings to be different.  The Mets have finished in last place.  Again.

A shadow falls over her paper.  "You're late," Joan says without looking up.

"I am never late --"

There's a thread of dialogue, a movie she'd seen with Oren over Christmas one winter not too long ago when they'd both been free and had wanted to relive a childhood love. Joan can’t help herself.  "Don't tell me that you're never early either," she says, quirking an eyebrow.  Moriarty does, it would seem, always arrive precisely when she intends to.

"I'm sorry I don't follow?"  A twitch, a quirk of her crooked smile.  The reference is not lost on her; she's allowing Joan to say it without pointing out that she is not a teenage boy and that she's far too old to still remember lines from those books.

"Never mind," she says instead of an explanation she doesn’t want to give. Joan folds up the paper and set it aside, eyeing Moriarty in her light jacket and sweater underneath.  It looks soft, and Joan has to bite her lip to resist the urge to reach out and touch it.   "You are late though."

"Apologizes, I was delayed," Her eyes crinkle at the corners and she slides into the seat across from Joan. "Accident on Lincoln."  It's the extra bit of information that throws Joan, for Moriarty usually doesn’t share anything than what she must - especially about her whereabouts.  It feels like a peace offering.

The other side of the borough, almost in Queens. Joan frowns. "What were you doing over there?" Moriarty opens her mouth to reply, but Joan holds up a hand. "Actually never mind, I probably shouldn't know."

There’s a flicker of a smile across Moriarty’s face.  "It wasn't anything untoward," she points out, bending and pulling a paper bag from her purse.  She slides a shiny box of chalk pastels from it and holds them up for Joan’s inspection.  "I was getting these."

"Pastels?" Joan asks.  She’s never known Moriarty to favor them.  A part of her wonders why Moriarty would share something that doesn’t know herself to excel at, but the part of Joan that is content with this thing between them knows that this is Jamie telling her about a new thing she’s excited to try.

This is _Jamie_ and Joan wants to know more.

"Yes. I must confess that they're a medium that I'm not overly familiar with."  And it’s that little human gesture, a fidget and a biting at the lip, before the cool mask of Moriarty falls back into place with a wan, disinterested smile, that starts Joan’s fall.  "I wanted to try something new."

Joan is surprisingly content to fall, to let herself tumble backwards into this thing between them.  To give in to what they both want.

She smiles, and it’s easy and content and she knows Jamie will thing she’s joking.  "Are you going to ask if you can draw me?" Jamie perks up, setting aside the pastel box and eyeing Joan with intense want. "Because the answer's still no."

Jamie smiles back, and reaches for her tea.  "I do wish that you'd let me."

"Take a picture, Jamie," Joan points to Jamie’s discarded cell phone, half underneath the box of pastels and the eighteen languages proclaiming that these are, indeed, the best product for the money.  "If you want."

She waits, watching Joan with narrowed eyes, until Joan picks up her tea and holds it between two hands, her attention on the iPhone camera pointed at her at the sound of shouting and a crash outside.  An accident.  Fender bender.  Pissed off cabbie, but no one looks hurt.  Joan's hair spilled over her shoulder, elbows on the table as she distractedly allowed herself to be captivated by the scene outside.

Joan looks back to Jamie and she’s tucking her phone away into her purse.  "I think that will do nicely." She says, and picks up her tea once more.

Joan watches her across the table, attention seemingly absorbed in the fender bender outside.  She wants to ask, and the want gets the better of her.  She reaches across the table and picks up the discarded pastels, turning the box over in her hands.  Chalk pastels – not oil.  She feels as though that should be significant.  "Art - art like this anyway," Joan swallows as Jamie’s eyes slide back to meet her gaze evenly.  "It's a private process for you, isn't it?"

"How do you mean?"

A small breath of air escapes Joan’s lips, wishing she didn’t have to try and explain this.  It’s a feeling, an impression, one she doesn’t quite know how to put into words.  Joan takes a deep breath, and then another.  Tries to put this into words.  "We saw your studio space, the first time we met.  Those ... paintings were not forgeries." She doesn’t need to verify this with Jamie, because they’d actually looked into at the time, as Sherlock had confessed to knowing of Irene Adler’s penchant for occasionally returning copies of masterworks in favor of preserving the originals within her possession.  The whole thing, at the time, had struck Joan as odd, but as Irene became Moriarty became Jamie it almost seemed to steady itself into just another aspect of the woman’s personality.

Joan chances a glimpse at Jamie, but there’s no expression on her face save that same look of mild disinterest that Joan is used to when Jamie is paying attention, but is not wanting to betray herself. "Sherlock told me that you workspace was always meticulously clean when you and he.... The difference struck me." A coy smile and an accusatory finger.  "You're messy."

"Well.”  Joan gets a small smile in return, a twitch upwards of acknowledgement.   "They say that disorganization is a sign of a brilliant mind."

She laughs.  "Yes, but you hide it."

"Perhaps I do."  A cop has shown up at the fender bender outside, and Jamie has noticed his presence and seems to be contemplating leaving.  She tucks the pastels back into their paper bag and folds her hands over the bag, her eyes fixed on Joan. 

Joan shifts, uncomfortable, somehow, under the stare. "I suppose it would be too much to ask why?"

There is no response, and Jamie is gone in a heartbeat, her tea cooling on the table.

-

Joan is enjoying a rare night of no interruptions to her sleep cycle with Sherlock out of town for the next two evenings.  She’d been offered a chance to go with him – to Washington and a bee keeping conference that he’s been talking about for weeks now.  It’s cold and it looks like snow is coming soon.  It’s mid-November and Joan hadn’t wanted to go and potentially get stuck.  Not when she has Jets tickets for their only Monday night game this season.

She’s woken up by the sound of her phone ringing and she’s about to ignore it, knowing that Sherlock’s probably found some beekeeping murder or whatever and wants her opinion on it.  She doesn’t want to talk to him, and is half-awake and sleepily ready to tell him off when the voice on the other end stops her. 

 "I want to see you."

"I..." _Christ_. Joan rolls over and stares at her alarm clock for a _long_ time, the numbers part of an hour of the day that should not exist.  She flops back onto the pillow, one arm flung over her eyes.  "It's three in the morning Jamie."

"I know darling, I'm sorry."  Funny that she doesn't sound sorry at all.  Joan could hear the hesitation in her voice though, and she wanted to know why it was present at all, even if she was half asleep and this really could have been done in the morning. "I'd wanted-"

She rolls over onto her side, curling around the phone that she’s still got cradled to her ear.  "Can't this wait?  I'm exhausted." Joan knows that the answer is going to come in the form of more needling until she gives in.  She’s almost used to it at this point, but puts up a good fight because that is simply who she is. "I know that we..."

"Sherlock is out of town, is he not?  Off at that bee keeping conference in Washington?"

She sighs.  "Yes, he is, but I don't think he'd want you here Jamie." And honestly, it’s the truth.  Sherlock’s seemed to accept the casual coffee dates that they’ve had (and Joan’s maybe played down the dinners and that the other things that they get up to, because, frankly, it’s not his business who she chooses to sleep with).  Joan doesn’t think he’d want her here without knowing first, and it’s way too late to call, even him.  "Not without him being here too."

"What about you, Joan?  Do you want me there?" The question is casual, but it carries a weight that Joan knows well.  A comment on her insistence that they are _three_ rather than two, because she won’t forget what Moriarty did to Sherlock. 

"What I want doesn't matter." Joan rolls over, closing her eyes, trying to shut out the feeling of betrayal that she cannot shake.  She’s falling faster now; she can feel herself picking up speed with each passing day.  Soon she’s going to more than this.  Soon she’s going to admit to what this is.

It’s only a matter of time.

"It does to me." Jamie replies.  "Ten minutes, dear Watson."

-

Joan answers the door in her favorite red cardigan pulled tight against the winter wind, her sweatpants bunched at her knees.  "We shouldn't be doing this,” she says, tired eyes taking in Jamie’s equally sleepy appearance, and the fact that there’s obviously an overnight bag slung over her shoulder.

"Are you even going to invite me in?" and somehow, that isn’t the question that Joan is expecting.  She wraps her arms around herself and takes note of Jamie’s thick wool overcoat and her oddly casual clothes.  Well, Joan supposed that it was three in the morning.

"I'm debating it." She answers with a wry smile. 

Joan steps aside and, once Jamie’s scooted inside, Joan closes the door against the bitter November night air.  Jamie sets her bag down and starts to shrug off her coat.  She’s wearing another one of her soft-looking sweaters that makes Joan want to reach out and touch her. She wants to wrap her fingers around the soft fabric and pull Jamie into her and never let her go.  It’s a terrifying thought, one that shake Joan to the core, each and every time she has it, flitting in like a specter at the corners of her mind. She doesn’t know how to chase it away.

Jamie is looking at her with the strangest expression on her face.  Eventually she sighs and toes off comfortable, practical shoes and stands in socks and comfortable sweater, giving Joan a searching look. "He knows, Joan,” she says, and somehow it doesn’t need an explanation.  Jamie looks down, hair catching the dim light from the overhead light in the foyer, shining golden.  “He's threatened me - me - if I hurt you."  Her eyes are crinkled at the corners, full of amusement and quiet joy at the pronouncement.  Joan looks up sharply, meeting Jamie’s gaze as her grin grows wide – wild.  "No sense sneaking about when his being out of town is essentially permission to do..."

"Do what Jamie?" Joan asks.  She knows the answer though.  She’s not sure she wants to commit, to say that she wants this too. 

What she wants, really, is to take Jamie upstairs and go back to bed.  At least then, maybe, the house won’t feel so empty.

"Oh, you know; this and that." Jamie steps forward, fingers reaching out and touching Joan’s cardigan.  Her fingers curl into the wool and they’re almost nose to nose.  Joan leans forward, lips hovering just over Jamie’s, their breath mingling.

"You're being evasive." She whispers.

"Well," and Joan knows she might have stepped too far as Jamie’s expression falls and she draws back.  Her fingers fall from Joan’s sweater and she looks down at her feet. "I was hoping to spend an evening in your company."

Joan runs a tired hand though her hair. "As its morning now, I think we're past that." She inclines her head towards the stairs, her face an open invitation.  "I'm going to bed."

-

"See,” Jamie says, settling onto the corner of Joan’s bed, bouncing slightly.  “This is what I wanted, a proper bed.  No more back seats of cars and storage cupboards and loos."

From where she’s pulling an extra blanket from the back of her closet, Joan raises an eyebrow and unearths the blanket.  It’s simple and cotton, meant for summer.  She’s not sure where her other, warmer, blanket has gotten to.  "It was one time, Jamie."

Returning the gesture, along with a look that Joan knows is intended to have the effect that it is absolutely having on her, Jamie drawls, "A _very good_ time."

Joan presses her lips together, resisting the urge to concede defeat and smile.  It is three thirty in the morning and _god_ , she wants this.  It’s offered freely, no strings attached.  Joan shoos Jamie off the bed and spreads out the new blanket on top of the others.  The bed looks warm, cozy, and Joan is falling for charming smiles and hands that deftly divest her of her clothing before they pull her down into the bed, still warm from where she’d been curled, asleep, just minutes before.

A kiss is pressed to her shoulder blade, and a hand skirts around her hip.  Joan turns, and the hand slips further down.  Jamie’s eyes are dark with want and Joan isn’t about to say now, her breath catching in her throat as sure fingers touch her, lingering and unhurried.  Sleepy, tired sex is good right now.

"Fine," is all she says, and it's permission enough.

She’s not going to be able to last much longer.

-

It's the sound of scratching - of pages turning that wakes Joan up.  She isn't really fully asleep as it is, her mind drifting lazily in and out of dream and wakefulness.  At first she thinks it's the rain, a steady tapping on the window and a gloom that lingers and sinks its claws into her, holding her in and not letting her fully pull herself from the world of dreams. 

A page turns and there's that scratching sound again, too noisy to be graphite - probably charcoal against paper.

"I told you not to draw me," she mutters, mostly into the pillow.

The scratching stops, and there is nothing but the sound of rain slashing against the window sill filing the room.  Joan lets herself float in it, awash with the warm feeling of sleep still lingering her own contentment. 

A chuckle breaks the silence - and the scrape continues.  "You said you wouldn't sit for me.  There's a difference, Watson."

Joan rolls into the pillow and groans, biting at her lip and using the sharp pinching feeling to catapult herself into feeling more awake.  The weather is not helping her want for sloth. 

She sits up, hair mussed and mouth dry and tasting foul.  Blinking owlishly in the dim light, she sees a slightly blurry Jamie leaning against the window sill - oversized sketchbook propped up on her thighs.  "Are you wearing pants?"

It's the first thing that comes to mind, and, in retrospect, absolutely the wrong thing to say.  Joan knows she should admonish Jamie for taking the letter, rather than the intent of her words to heart.  She supposes that she shouldn't expect any less.  She's about to say something to correct her previous comment with another, but the dim light and the way that Jamie looks, silhouetted against the window, are enough to drive the thought from her mind.

Jamie's hair is mussed, her face scrubbed clean of makeup.  On her neck and chest and thighs there are marks, marks Joan knows she put there.  She looks down at herself, and then back to Joan, one eyebrow raised in challenge. A wicked grin blossoms across her lips.  "Evidently not."

"Stop drawing and come here," Joan says, because fighting this... thing between them has never been her strong suit.

The sketchbook is set carefully aside and Jamie steps forward in an old, slightly ratty t-shirt, her fingers stained black with charcoal.  She touches Joan, fingers revenant on her skin.  She leaves lines, black marks of her steady corruption all over Joan. 

Joan is lost on rainy morning in the half-darkness of her bedroom.

 


End file.
